Relationship Marketing Essential to Sales

You may have become bored with the notion of relationship marketing as just feel-good jargon. But the truth is, if you use well-crafted communications designed to keep in touch with and inform prospects as they move through their consideration and buying processes — not just focusing on the easy or short-term sales opportunities — you can pick up the three out of four sales that competitors are leaving on the table. And that makes you and your B2B lead development programs winners in 2007.

Staying in the race

It’s a fact. Salespeople are measured and paid for winning the race for short-term sales, usually causing them to focus on the easy sales opportunities while ignoring the longer-term B2B leads. As a result, nearly three-quarters of B2B leads that convert into sales are ignored. Or to put it another way, three out of four sales opportunities are available for your competition to win.

To reverse this trend requires patience. Industry experts estimate that only one-quarter of those who are going to buy do so in the first six months. Yet, roughly another quarter buy within a 7-to-12-month period, another quarter buy within a 13-to-18-month period and the final quarter buy sometime after 18 months.

These valuable longer-term B2B leads must be nurtured with a series of communication efforts designed to help move prospects along in their buying cycles. In other words, the philosophy for getting your share of those future sales is simple: stay in the race by staying in sight and in mind.

Getting started

When designing B2B lead nurturing programs, ask yourself:

• How do we best deliver messages to the people who will influence or make the final buying decisions?
• How do we stay with them as they move through their consideration and buying processes?
• How can we communicate in a way that addresses the prospects' issues and reduces the perceived risk of buying from our company?
• What can we offer that will engage prospects when they are ready to move forward with their buying processes?

Building a sales-winning relationship with long-term prospects

Structure a series of ongoing communications — by mail, email or phone —designed to keep pace with your prospects' information needs. And include multiple offers that appeal to prospects at all stages of the buying process.

For example, if prospective customers are early in the buying process, they are more receptive to offers for free information in the form of how-to guides, white papers or email newsletters.

As prospects move further along in the buying process, appropriate offers may include those that require a higher level of interest or commitment on the part of the prospect, such as webinar invitations, demonstrations, checklists and other decision-making tools.

Finally, as prospects approach being ready to buy, they are more receptive to longer, in-depth seminars; needs assessments; or meeting with and getting a proposal or quotation from a salesperson.

Change your creative operations for success

The implementation of this philosophy requires sales or marketing to put lead-nurturing responsibility into their job descriptions. It may even require the development of a whole new “lead development department” that nurtures, manages and tracks longer-term sales opportunities. Either way, it's essential to your company's sales success.